I knew the XTERRA West Cup Championship would be a long, painful, and grueling race but I didn’t expect it to start for me five days before the cannon even sounded.  On Monday afternoon I decided to take my new mountain bike for a quick spin through the nearest canyon.  On the way back I lost my forward momentum while going across a footbridge.  I fell to the inside of the turn and went off the bridge and onto some large rocks.  To add insult to injury my bike decided to land on my head and chest.  I tried to breathe and was fearful that I had collapsed a lung.  After a few seconds I realized that I could breathe and my next thought was that I had violated every safety rule there is for bike riding.  I had no phone, no one knew where I was, and I had seen no one in the canyon.  I quickly decided this was going to turn into a problem for me.

I had to get the bike off of me and get out of the ditch.  I don’t know how I did it  as I was trying to keep myself calm.  I allowed myself a few seconds of freaking out and then got to work.  The first thing I clearly remember after getting out of the ditch is leaning on the bike.  I tried to mount the bike and felt pain shooting up and down the right side of my body.  I had landed directly on my hip and now the pain was making me unable to lift my right leg up.  I knew I couldn’t stay there, I had to at the very least get back to the city streets.  I told myself if I made it the street I could at least flag down a car.  I had to use both hands to lift my leg over the top tube of the bike.  It was some of the worst pain I have ever experienced but it allowed me to get moving.  I had to cross two streams where I had to repeat the process of throwing the leg over the bike, needless to say it was not pleasant. (more…)